10th June 2024

Dear Colleagues,

Please find our weekly briefing below to cascade to your colleagues who can respond on behalf of your team, school or setting.

Reminders:
Headteachers / Deputies are invited to attend the Head Teachers' Termly meeting. Please see updated Head Teachers' Termly Agenda - Summer 2024 (PDF) [152KB]	On 18th June 10am - 12 pm
Schools and Colleges are invited to participate in the Whole School SEND Professional Development Group. Click here to sign up	By 4th July
Hillingdon LEAP can be accessed for information and guidance for all settings	Ongoing
Notification of Critical Incident & contacts can be found here	Ongoing
Education Services contacts can be found here	Ongoing
The SEND & Inclusion Training Brochure can be viewed here	Ongoing
The HLP Brochure can be viewed at Hillingdon Learning Partnership	Ongoing

Updates/Information:
School Food Matters - Tell Us your Views Hillingdon Council have commissioned School Food Matters to undertake a survey in primary schools which will shape the universal offer to support improvements to school food in Hillingdon. The requirement will be for Headteachers to complete the online survey, which will be open from 17th June to the end of term. Survey link will be sent out shortly and more details will be shared at the Head Teachers Termly meeting on 18th June.
HAF Programme The free school meal holiday programme is funded by the Household Support Grant was extended from April - September 2024. This means that we can continue to support those families with children attending a Hillingdon School, who are in receipt of benefit related free school meals, during the six weeks school summer holiday 2024 with food vouchers. The school summer holiday vouchers will be issued in two payments, the first payment will be emailed week commencing 22^nd July and will cover the first 3 weeks, the second payment will be emailed week commencing 12^th August covering the last 3 weeks. We will require you to submit your FSM return no later than Tuesday 9^th July. All children in receipt of benefit related free school meals who are on roll as of 9^th July will be eligible for the school summer holiday food vouchers. When submitting your changes, please ensure you follow the instructions at the top of the FSM spreadsheet (already shared with schools). Please do not change the password and please ensure you have removed any leavers and any highlighted colours of information previously submitted to us. The spreadsheet should only contain new changes or information. Data received after 9^th July will not be included, if you need any further clarification or support, please contact us by email hsgrant@hillingdon.gov.uk For those families that have their vouchers emailed direct to the school, these will be emailed to the school on Friday 19^th July, giving you time to print and distribute to families before the end of term. Please note that we will not be able to make any amendments, re-issue or re-send vouchers for the school summer holiday period once schools re-open in September 2024. This will be the final payment from the current Household Support Grant (HSF5), there are no further payments scheduled after the school summer holidays 2024. Please find below the link to the Household Support website, feel free to share this with your parents / carers. Household Support Fund - Hillingdon Council

Updates/Information:

School Food Matters - Tell Us your Views

Hillingdon Council have commissioned School Food Matters to undertake a survey in primary schools which will shape the universal offer to support improvements to school food in Hillingdon.

The requirement will be for Headteachers to complete the online survey, which will be open from 17th June to the end of term. Survey link will be sent out shortly and more details will be shared at the Head Teachers Termly meeting on 18th June.

HAF Programme

The free school meal holiday programme is funded by the Household Support Grant was extended from April - September 2024. This means that we can continue to support those families with children attending a Hillingdon School, who are in receipt of benefit related free school meals, during the six weeks school summer holiday 2024 with food vouchers.

The school summer holiday vouchers will be issued in two payments, the first payment will be emailed week commencing 22^nd July and will cover the first 3 weeks, the second payment will be emailed week commencing 12^th August covering the last 3 weeks.

We will require you to submit your FSM return no later than Tuesday 9^th July. All children in receipt of benefit related free school meals who are on roll as of 9^th July will be eligible for the school summer holiday food vouchers. When submitting your changes, please ensure you follow the instructions at the top of the FSM spreadsheet (already shared with schools). Please do not change the password and please ensure you have removed any leavers and any highlighted colours of information previously submitted to us. The spreadsheet should only contain new changes or information.

Data received after 9^th July will not be included, if you need any further clarification or support, please contact us by email hsgrant@hillingdon.gov.uk

For those families that have their vouchers emailed direct to the school, these will be emailed to the school on Friday 19^th July, giving you time to print and distribute to families before the end of term. Please note that we will not be able to make any amendments, re-issue or re-send vouchers for the school summer holiday period once schools re-open in September 2024.

This will be the final payment from the current Household Support Grant (HSF5), there are no further payments scheduled after the school summer holidays 2024.

Please find below the link to the Household Support website, feel free to share this with your parents / carers.

Household Support Fund - Hillingdon Council

For Action:
Summer 2024 School Census: please share with Data Leads This summer's Census closes Wednesday 12^th June. Schools should submit their data and resolve errors/queries so we can approve your school return along with the DfE authorisation. Currently there are 24 Academies whose returns have not been authorised by the DfE. Maintained schools are fairing better, only 13 schools have not been authorised but 3 schools have not yet submitted their return. We are supporting schools in solving their errors/queries but do ask data leads to look at their return in COLLECT as soon as possible. Many thanks to those schools that have had their returns authorised as well as those working on fixing their errors/queries. VYED Data for Attendance The Business Intelligence Team are providing support to Hillingdon's Attendance Team so they can better help schools. Every week we download the latest VYED data for all schools and pupils in the borough. Most of the data looks good but we have identified a few issues. Schools funded by a local authority are expected to provide 190 days of school per academic year. This equates to 380 sessions. Back in April we found a few pupils, from different schools, who had over 450 Possible Session for the period 04/09/2023 to mid-April. Obviously, this is wrong. We checked the data and then contacted one of the school's and they found the same issue in their MIS. This issue is not resolved, to us it looks like a MIS issue, from two different solution suppliers. If your school is having a similar issue, could you please contact us. We have raised support tickets with both the DfE and Wonde. When using VYED we have had to make use of the services filters. When we use VYED to view Hillingdon's or an individual school's data we shown high level numbers. These are No. of Pupils, Overall Attendance, Persistently absent pupils, and Severely absent pupils, they just do not look right. We used the Compulsory School Age and Leavers filters to move closer to what we expected. There is an explanation of how these can be used in this document: VYED Filter Guidance (PDF) [345KB] Broadcast+/Perspective Lite Webinar & Using Broadcast+ for Attainment Reporting Thank you to the schools that attended last week's webinar. We and Angel Solutions apologise to those participants who had delays in being admitted. The webinar was recorded it will be added to LEAP as soon as it is forwarded to us here: Guidance & Support - Leap (hillingdon.gov.uk). In March 2023 we ran a similar session, which was also recorded and has been added to that page. Could we please ask Headteachers to setup appropriate staff with the following roles in their Perspective Lite software. We will be using these roles as recipients of document requests, such as KS4 Results EDI files from your examining bodies, and early years attainment results. By using a common set of roles, we can ensure that document requests are sent to the right people. Our purpose is to streamline the process and give improved visibility of progress to schools and ourselves. We have added to LEAP some document that can be referred to by you and your staff to make the setting up of new users easier. These can be found here: Guidance & Support - Leap (hillingdon.gov.uk) It is recommended to Headteachers they assign another person to setup their users, for instance the School Business Manager, your PA, or the Data Manager. This will relieve you of the administration of adding/changing/deleting users. We cannot do this for you because your Perspective Lite data is confidential, and you must have control over who can access it. If you as a Headteacher needs to be setup on Perspective Lite please send me (msherman@hillingdon.gov.uk) details of your full name and email address, and we will ask Angel Solutions to set you up on the system. Marc Sherman,Business Intelligence Team
Education & Training Pathway for 16+ Event Please see link below for details on this event. Secondaries, can we ask you display this poster around your settings and share with parent / carers in your newsletters. Education & Training Pathway for 16+ event A4 poster (PDF) [1MB]
Learn Hillingdon Please see details of new fully funded adult education courses to be shared with your staff / parents / carers: Introduction to Understanding ADHD Career Pathways Workshop NHS Learn Hillingdon new courses and workshops June 24 (PDF) [83KB]
Team Teach Training Team Teach Level 1 17^th June 2024 at St Mary's Catholic School Click here to view Team Teach Level 1 agenda.pdf Team Teach Level 1 & 2 10^th & 11^th February 2025 (venue TBC) Click here to view Team Teach Level 1 agenda.pdf Click here to view Team Teach Level 2 agenda.pdf To check availability of courses, reserve your space or simply find out more please email info@changing-behaviour.co.uk

For Action:

Summer 2024 School Census: please share with Data Leads

This summer's Census closes Wednesday 12^th June. Schools should submit their data and resolve errors/queries so we can approve your school return along with the DfE authorisation.

Currently there are 24 Academies whose returns have not been authorised by the DfE. Maintained schools are fairing better, only 13 schools have not been authorised but 3 schools have not yet submitted their return. We are supporting schools in solving their errors/queries but do ask data leads to look at their return in COLLECT as soon as possible.

Many thanks to those schools that have had their returns authorised as well as those working on fixing their errors/queries.

VYED Data for Attendance

The Business Intelligence Team are providing support to Hillingdon's Attendance Team so they can better help schools. Every week we download the latest VYED data for all schools and pupils in the borough. Most of the data looks good but we have identified a few issues.

Schools funded by a local authority are expected to provide 190 days of school per academic year. This equates to 380 sessions. Back in April we found a few pupils, from different schools, who had over 450 Possible Session for the period 04/09/2023 to mid-April. Obviously, this is wrong. We checked the data and then contacted one of the school's and they found the same issue in their MIS. This issue is not resolved, to us it looks like a MIS issue, from two different solution suppliers. If your school is having a similar issue, could you please contact us. We have raised support tickets with both the DfE and Wonde.

When using VYED we have had to make use of the services filters. When we use VYED to view Hillingdon's or an individual school's data we shown high level numbers. These are No. of Pupils, Overall Attendance, Persistently absent pupils, and Severely absent pupils, they just do not look right. We used the Compulsory School Age and Leavers filters to move closer to what we expected. There is an explanation of how these can be used in this document: VYED Filter Guidance (PDF) [345KB]

Broadcast+/Perspective Lite Webinar & Using Broadcast+ for Attainment Reporting

Thank you to the schools that attended last week's webinar. We and Angel Solutions apologise to those participants who had delays in being admitted. The webinar was recorded it will be added to LEAP as soon as it is forwarded to us here: Guidance & Support - Leap (hillingdon.gov.uk). In March 2023 we ran a similar session, which was also recorded and has been added to that page.

Could we please ask Headteachers to setup appropriate staff with the following roles in their Perspective Lite software. We will be using these roles as recipients of document requests, such as KS4 Results EDI files from your examining bodies, and early years attainment results. By using a common set of roles, we can ensure that document requests are sent to the right people. Our purpose is to streamline the process and give improved visibility of progress to schools and ourselves.

We have added to LEAP some document that can be referred to by you and your staff to make the setting up of new users easier. These can be found here: Guidance & Support - Leap (hillingdon.gov.uk) It is recommended to Headteachers they assign another person to setup their users, for instance the School Business Manager, your PA, or the Data Manager. This will relieve you of the administration of adding/changing/deleting users. We cannot do this for you because your Perspective Lite data is confidential, and you must have control over who can access it.

If you as a Headteacher needs to be setup on Perspective Lite please send me (msherman@hillingdon.gov.uk) details of your full name and email address, and we will ask Angel Solutions to set you up on the system.

Marc Sherman,Business Intelligence Team

Education & Training Pathway for 16+ Event

Please see link below for details on this event.

Secondaries, can we ask you display this poster around your settings and share with parent / carers in your newsletters.

Education & Training Pathway for 16+ event A4 poster (PDF) [1MB]

Learn Hillingdon

Please see details of new fully funded adult education courses to be shared with your staff / parents / carers:

Introduction to Understanding ADHD
Career Pathways Workshop NHS

Learn Hillingdon new courses and workshops June 24 (PDF) [83KB]

Team Teach Training

Team Teach Level 1
17^th June 2024 at St Mary's Catholic School
Click here to view Team Teach Level 1 agenda.pdf

Team Teach Level 1 & 2
10^th & 11^th February 2025 (venue TBC)
Click here to view Team Teach Level 1 agenda.pdf

Click here to view Team Teach Level 2 agenda.pdf

To check availability of courses, reserve your space or simply find out more please email info@changing-behaviour.co.uk

Regards,

Abi Preston

Director of Education & SEND

Children's Services, London Borough of Hillingdon, 4E/07, Civic Centre, Uxbridge UB8 1UW